Yes, I'm ashamed to be one of those geeks that doesn't partake in the Monty Python on a nightly basis... But no, I've been here since 1999 and damn proud of it:-P
I do however have every episode of ST:TNG on VHS, does that count?
Dude, considering the earnestness of his position, and the well-thought-out nature of his comments, I highly doubt he's doing it for "karma" on some website.
I don't think GPS coordinates would work with a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Any idea on how to do it?
Orthodromic distance (distance measured on the surface of a sphere):
Let dlat = lat1 - lat2,
Let dlon = lon1 - lon2,
Let a = sin(dlat/2)^2 + cos(lat1)*cos(lat2)*sin(dlon/2)^2.
Distance between the points is 2*R*arctan(sqrt(a)/sqrt(1-a)), where R is radius of Earth.
However, Pythagorean theorem would be a good approximation since the Earth approximates a plane very closely on scales of 31 miles. Calculate the tangent plane to Earth at either point, convert from spherical to cartesian coordinates, project onto the tangent plane, and use Pythagorean theorem. I don't feel like doing all that though:-)
The attitude at DefCon this year was pretty much "Fuck the FCC." There were so many WiFi networks (over 1000, when we were scanning), that the hopes of any FCC official having the slightest chance of locating the one guy who was using an illegally high power were pretty much zero.
People (ahem) were flashing the firmware on their Senao cards to enable them to go up to 249 milliwatt. The entire area was bathed in 801.11 frequencies. Shit, I felt my hair stand up.
It was funny to see a thousand black-clad geeks waving their WiFi antennas in the air, trying to get a signal. If you didn't know better you would have thought it was some kind of dildo festival.
There is going to be loss at ANY bend, however the minimum bend radius gives to the limit of the acceptable loss.
Physically this just isn't true. I don't know the exact details of how they select the minimum curvature radius, but there is a threshold beyond which the light reflects completely. The fiber doesn't have to be absolutely straight. As I said in another post, the bend radius depends not only on the index of refraction but also the width of the fiber. You can bend a fiber to a certain degree with no loss, and there's even a formula for it.
I also wonder how the heating effects the refractive index of the core/cladding itself, and if this might lead to a feedback loss/heating effect.
Heating would tend to decrease the index of refraction (as the material heats it expands, and the decrease in density decreases the index). This would lead to greater loss of light, which would further heat the fiber. So you're right, it would be a runaway effect.
But, I guess what the article is saying is that the minimum radius (i.e. how "sharp" the bend is) is larger for higher power signals
Nah. The maximum radius doesn't depend whatsoever on the intensity of light passing through the fiber. If the radius is too tight, light will leak out, regardless of how weak. Light is already leaking out of these over-bent fibers. The problem is when the power gets too high, and the amount of leaked light becomes so great that it actually starts heating up the cladding.
BTW, the maximum curvature radius you can use depends on both the material the fiber itself is made of, and the material the cladding is made of. You want the two materials to have dissimilar indices of refraction -- the more dissimilar, the tighter you can bend the fiber without light leaking out of it. To some degree it also depends on the frequency of light you are using. But it does not depend on the intensity of the light.
It would seem that research needs to be done in the optical fiber coatings and their heat transfer properties as the fibers can handle the increased temperature, but the coatings can't. Either that or we are seeing the limits of fiber systems and the amount of load they can carry.
The problem actually is, when you bend a fiber beyond a certain point, the pulses end up striking the outside wall at an angle steeper than the critical angle. Total internal reflection no longer occurs, and some of the pulse energy escapes the fiber and heats up the coating. The problem isn't that the coating needs to be tougher -- the problem is, the fiber shouldn't be bent that much.
Now, it seems counterintuitive, but the narrower a fiber is, the more sharply you can bend it without a loss of TIR. This is because a narrower fiber causes the pulse to reflect more rapidly as it goes around the corner, so the total bending angle is distributed over more reflections. This keeps the light in the fiber.
I see four ways to solve this: 1) replace the fibers with narrower fibers, 2) replace the cladding with cladding that can take the heat dissipation, 3) use a lower transmission power, 4) have someone go out and assess each place where the fiber bends, and make it bend at a shallower angle if necessary.
Option 3 is pretty much impossible, since you need higher power to get a higher data rate (this is, after all, why the powers keep increasing). I think option 4 is pretty much the best shot.
Looks like some people forgot basic optics when they were laying the fiber...
The king of sealand must be a quirky fellow indeed.
One of the things that was made very clear in the talk (yes, I saw it) was that Lackey himself is terribly disappointed in how this has turned out. He doesn't want HavenCo to be going the way it is -- the problem is, the multi-million-dollar financiers are too paranoid to allow such grey-area use. Lackey is getting fucked, this is a raw deal. He's a great guy. He's already blown $250000 of his own fucking money on this, and used two years of his life. Give the guy a fucking break, will you.
You moron, did you even READ anything? One of the biggest reasons the company was going under was because it's restrictions on content were even more restrictive than US law, because the owners were unwilling to be seen as "anarchists." Why don't they have customers? Because it's easier to host the content on US soil!
I was there, I saw his talk. He's a good guy. These people are not "flaunting the laws of other countries." They are trying to provide a "Haven" (duh) where certain kinds of content can be hosted without fear of reprisal by backward, fascist-style governments.
But I hope Red Hat consulted IBM on this. It could be possible that IBM has some very secretive, well-laid plans in the works, and Red Hat could be compromising those plans, or at least taking the game to the next stage a little earlier than IBM had hoped for.
Anyway, I hope RH and IBM are coordinating on this. It would be terribly counterproductive for RH and IBM to be mutually interfering with each others' strategies.
But if you think about it... how or why does someone put his ICQ directory on a webserver?!
That's nothing. I've seen numerous instances of people putting their entire freakin' C-drive on their web server. Probably installed a personal web server and didn't know how to configure it, so they set the web root to "C:\".
But when I was a kid, it was made very clear to me that as a kid, I had very limited "rights" in the sense that I now know as an adult. Funny that this should be categorized in the "Your Rights Online" section, as it has nothing to do with "online" and little to do with rights.
The fact is, children don't have rights in the same sense as adults. Nobody seems to object vocally to this (except, of course, the kids). A 16 year old can't be out after midnight in most parts of the country. You can't buy alcohol. You can't decide which parent you want to live with in the event of a divorce. Nobody complains about this lack of rights. Kids are kids, after all.
Now, I'm not advocating a fascist-style crackdown in schools. It wasn't that long ago that I was in high school (and believe me, I hated it). But I don't see that kids should have any right to privacy while attending school (as in, on school property), and I see no reason why their own school performance records shouldn't be used, in a statistical fashion, to figure out who is and is not at risk of dropping out.
If we can use statistical data to determine whether an email message is spam, to a high degree of accuracy, why shouldn't we use data to figure out who is at high risk of dropping out? Why is everyone so eager to defend kids who want to throw away their own lives? There is a reason kids aren't given full control over their own lives, and that's because, honestly, they don't know what the hell to do yet.
I never learned Morse code, so looking at the Morse alphabet just now I was startled to find that it isn't a prefix code (that is, some codes are prefixes of other codes, therefore the code is ambiguous).
Example: 'VMS', 'EUMS' and 'SOS' are all encoded as...---... The only difference is where the letter boundaries are.
This probably doesn't lead to any confusion when transmitting English (you just pick the interpretation that makes sense), but it would really suck for transmitting data.
People keep bitching about NAT. I don't understand why people don't realize that this is identical to vhosting over HTTP. If a bunch of different virtual hosts run on the same IP, how does the web server know which virtual host to use?
Simple, the name of the virtual host is contained in the HTTP request. The HTTP protocol itself has support for this.
Similarly, we can rework P2P protocols to include the hostname as part of the request, then have a userspace daemon take care of redirecting the connection to a given internal host using port forwarding (call it a "dynamic hostname-bound port" if you want). I realize that old, entrenched protocols aren't going to take this approach, but it seems like the major complainers in this arena are P2P authors -- and their protocols are constantly changing anyway!
Hell, most P2P requests are encapsulated inside HTTP/1.1 which already has support for virtual hosts! The only piece missing is the little bit of software running on the NAT box to map a hostname to an internal IP and port. Sort of a weird kind of "reverse proxy." Actually, it's more of a two-way proxy.
The only people who'd be stuck are those running those silly little NAT gateway boxes that can't be programmed. Tough cookies -- if you're gonna bother with NAT, get a cheap PC and run a real firewall, not these stupid gateways.
This could be done right now. Sure, the correct solution is IPv6, but who the hell are we kidding here? It ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
The RIAA isn't trying to scare people aware from using P2P -- at least, not directly. They are going after the big file sharers. By scaring people into believing that they'll only get caught if they actually share files, people will all decide to go into their P2P client settings and disable sharing.
With nobody sharing files, P2P becomes pretty damn useless, and they don't have to directly attack the downloaders.
At any rate, I'm glad the RIAA has chosen this approach (at least, for the time being). They aren't directly attacking P2P, they're only attacking the people sharing copyrighted content. As long as they don't kill P2P for legitimate purposes, I say let them rape and pillage to their hearts' content. The "revolution" again the music industry is bound to start sometime soon, anyway...
Does no one here understand the basic concepts of economics? If people don't pay for music, there won't be any music -- or, at least, there will be very little.
That's right. If people don't pay for software, there won't be any software -- oh wait. There's a few hundred thousand people making software for free. Sorry.
Your statement is basically saying "Who the hell would make music, except for money?" This shows an extreme ignorance of the motivations of many artists.
After all, who the hell would code, except for money.... I've never heard something so blatantly dumb in my life.
Slashdot Mirror
I do however have every episode of ST:TNG on VHS, does that count?
Dude, considering the earnestness of his position, and the well-thought-out nature of his comments, I highly doubt he's doing it for "karma" on some website.
God DAMMIT I can't remember where that's from! Please, remind me.
The only way to "deal" with these people is castration.
Who's gonna stop them?
The question is, "WHAT'S gonna stop them?" The answer is "Ethics," of which IBM has a great deal more than SCO.
Orthodromic distance (distance measured on the surface of a sphere):
Let dlat = lat1 - lat2,
Let dlon = lon1 - lon2,
Let a = sin(dlat/2)^2 + cos(lat1)*cos(lat2)*sin(dlon/2)^2.
Distance between the points is 2*R*arctan(sqrt(a)/sqrt(1-a)), where R is radius of Earth.
However, Pythagorean theorem would be a good approximation since the Earth approximates a plane very closely on scales of 31 miles. Calculate the tangent plane to Earth at either point, convert from spherical to cartesian coordinates, project onto the tangent plane, and use Pythagorean theorem. I don't feel like doing all that though :-)
0.0001 mile is 6.3 inches (16 cm) -- I can believe they measured the distance to within that accuracy, probably using a laser.
People (ahem) were flashing the firmware on their Senao cards to enable them to go up to 249 milliwatt. The entire area was bathed in 801.11 frequencies. Shit, I felt my hair stand up.
It was funny to see a thousand black-clad geeks waving their WiFi antennas in the air, trying to get a signal. If you didn't know better you would have thought it was some kind of dildo festival.
Physically this just isn't true. I don't know the exact details of how they select the minimum curvature radius, but there is a threshold beyond which the light reflects completely. The fiber doesn't have to be absolutely straight. As I said in another post, the bend radius depends not only on the index of refraction but also the width of the fiber. You can bend a fiber to a certain degree with no loss, and there's even a formula for it.
I also wonder how the heating effects the refractive index of the core/cladding itself, and if this might lead to a feedback loss/heating effect.
Heating would tend to decrease the index of refraction (as the material heats it expands, and the decrease in density decreases the index). This would lead to greater loss of light, which would further heat the fiber. So you're right, it would be a runaway effect.
Obviously I meant the minimum radius of curvature, not the maximum.
Nah. The maximum radius doesn't depend whatsoever on the intensity of light passing through the fiber. If the radius is too tight, light will leak out, regardless of how weak. Light is already leaking out of these over-bent fibers. The problem is when the power gets too high, and the amount of leaked light becomes so great that it actually starts heating up the cladding.
BTW, the maximum curvature radius you can use depends on both the material the fiber itself is made of, and the material the cladding is made of. You want the two materials to have dissimilar indices of refraction -- the more dissimilar, the tighter you can bend the fiber without light leaking out of it. To some degree it also depends on the frequency of light you are using. But it does not depend on the intensity of the light.
The problem actually is, when you bend a fiber beyond a certain point, the pulses end up striking the outside wall at an angle steeper than the critical angle. Total internal reflection no longer occurs, and some of the pulse energy escapes the fiber and heats up the coating. The problem isn't that the coating needs to be tougher -- the problem is, the fiber shouldn't be bent that much.
Now, it seems counterintuitive, but the narrower a fiber is, the more sharply you can bend it without a loss of TIR. This is because a narrower fiber causes the pulse to reflect more rapidly as it goes around the corner, so the total bending angle is distributed over more reflections. This keeps the light in the fiber.
I see four ways to solve this: 1) replace the fibers with narrower fibers, 2) replace the cladding with cladding that can take the heat dissipation, 3) use a lower transmission power, 4) have someone go out and assess each place where the fiber bends, and make it bend at a shallower angle if necessary.
Option 3 is pretty much impossible, since you need higher power to get a higher data rate (this is, after all, why the powers keep increasing). I think option 4 is pretty much the best shot.
Looks like some people forgot basic optics when they were laying the fiber...
One of the things that was made very clear in the talk (yes, I saw it) was that Lackey himself is terribly disappointed in how this has turned out. He doesn't want HavenCo to be going the way it is -- the problem is, the multi-million-dollar financiers are too paranoid to allow such grey-area use. Lackey is getting fucked, this is a raw deal. He's a great guy. He's already blown $250000 of his own fucking money on this, and used two years of his life. Give the guy a fucking break, will you.
I was there, I saw his talk. He's a good guy. These people are not "flaunting the laws of other countries." They are trying to provide a "Haven" (duh) where certain kinds of content can be hosted without fear of reprisal by backward, fascist-style governments.
STFU, you uninformed idiot.
Anyway, I hope RH and IBM are coordinating on this. It would be terribly counterproductive for RH and IBM to be mutually interfering with each others' strategies.
Awesome! I'll post a link to that location on my web page. Everyone who clicks on it will be banned from your site, even though they aren't a spider!
Oh, the fun I'll have...
That's nothing. I've seen numerous instances of people putting their entire freakin' C-drive on their web server. Probably installed a personal web server and didn't know how to configure it, so they set the web root to "C:\".
What's funnier to me is that CNN is the one who reported the speed in metric.
The fact is, children don't have rights in the same sense as adults. Nobody seems to object vocally to this (except, of course, the kids). A 16 year old can't be out after midnight in most parts of the country. You can't buy alcohol. You can't decide which parent you want to live with in the event of a divorce. Nobody complains about this lack of rights. Kids are kids, after all.
Now, I'm not advocating a fascist-style crackdown in schools. It wasn't that long ago that I was in high school (and believe me, I hated it). But I don't see that kids should have any right to privacy while attending school (as in, on school property), and I see no reason why their own school performance records shouldn't be used, in a statistical fashion, to figure out who is and is not at risk of dropping out.
If we can use statistical data to determine whether an email message is spam, to a high degree of accuracy, why shouldn't we use data to figure out who is at high risk of dropping out? Why is everyone so eager to defend kids who want to throw away their own lives? There is a reason kids aren't given full control over their own lives, and that's because, honestly, they don't know what the hell to do yet.
Example: 'VMS', 'EUMS' and 'SOS' are all encoded as ...---... The only difference is where the letter boundaries are.
This probably doesn't lead to any confusion when transmitting English (you just pick the interpretation that makes sense), but it would really suck for transmitting data.
Simple, the name of the virtual host is contained in the HTTP request. The HTTP protocol itself has support for this.
Similarly, we can rework P2P protocols to include the hostname as part of the request, then have a userspace daemon take care of redirecting the connection to a given internal host using port forwarding (call it a "dynamic hostname-bound port" if you want). I realize that old, entrenched protocols aren't going to take this approach, but it seems like the major complainers in this arena are P2P authors -- and their protocols are constantly changing anyway!
Hell, most P2P requests are encapsulated inside HTTP/1.1 which already has support for virtual hosts! The only piece missing is the little bit of software running on the NAT box to map a hostname to an internal IP and port. Sort of a weird kind of "reverse proxy." Actually, it's more of a two-way proxy.
The only people who'd be stuck are those running those silly little NAT gateway boxes that can't be programmed. Tough cookies -- if you're gonna bother with NAT, get a cheap PC and run a real firewall, not these stupid gateways.
This could be done right now. Sure, the correct solution is IPv6, but who the hell are we kidding here? It ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
With nobody sharing files, P2P becomes pretty damn useless, and they don't have to directly attack the downloaders.
At any rate, I'm glad the RIAA has chosen this approach (at least, for the time being). They aren't directly attacking P2P, they're only attacking the people sharing copyrighted content. As long as they don't kill P2P for legitimate purposes, I say let them rape and pillage to their hearts' content. The "revolution" again the music industry is bound to start sometime soon, anyway...
Gee, do you think he possibly planned that? Sheesh.
I'm just glad management wears ties. It's something to strangle the fuckers with if I see the need.
That's right. If people don't pay for software, there won't be any software -- oh wait. There's a few hundred thousand people making software for free. Sorry.
Your statement is basically saying "Who the hell would make music, except for money?" This shows an extreme ignorance of the motivations of many artists.
After all, who the hell would code, except for money.... I've never heard something so blatantly dumb in my life.